


The Good Ones Always Seem To Break

by Captain_Rachel



Category: Video Blogging RPF, Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Don't Even Know, Mark Fischbach Egos, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Paranoia, Self-Doubt, Self-Harm, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23166601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Rachel/pseuds/Captain_Rachel
Summary: Mark hasn’t been feeling like himself recently. He’s been having these intense recurring dreams... which are so realistic that part of him is starting to wonder if they’re really dreams at all.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	The Good Ones Always Seem To Break

Google has never been so… _remarkably_ unhelpful before.

Now admittedly some of this is probably due to user error, because Mark has reached a state of exhaustion which he had previously thought was only obtainable by those about to literally drop dead. He’s so exhausted that he’s surprised that he has enough energy to breathe, let alone operate a computer and type with any degree of accuracy.

So some of Google’s unhelpfulness may be due to the fact that Mark’s typing looks like what would happen if a drunk monkey attacked a keyboard. At least once Mark’s queries had literally returned _nothing_ — which he’d thought was impossible— while a few times he’s gotten results exclusively in what he thinks is either Swedish or maybe Norwegian.

But despite how unhelpful the world’s most well-known search engine has been, Mark can’t just do stop looking. He’s tried, but has been unable to even take a single step towards approaching a real person to talk about what he’s going through. So he keeps googling, trying again and again... and again. Eventually Mark manages to pull himself together enough to type out something which, after he rereads it three times and makes about four corrections and then finally hits enter… doesn’t work at all.

Oh he gets search results, in fact he even gets _English_ search results, but… well they’re all either bullshit New Age sites talking about dream interpretation, badly written Creepypastas about demonic possession or various mommy bloggers sharing tips and tricks on how to get a good night’s sleep with a new baby in the house or a cranky toddler.

Mark even tries abandoning his search. Instead he throws himself into his videos, creating one hell of a buffer of scheduled video posts and doing his best to ignore the problem in the hopes that it will go away. This lasts for a week… and it doesn’t work. Mark had thought it would have, but what is surprising is that week in which he’d abandoned his search, things had only gotten worse… which is something that he hadn’t thought was possible.

So, late one night he opens up Google once again and, in pure desperation, types in four words and hits enter before he can stop himself or change his mind.

**_my dreams feel real_ **

At first Mark thinks that his “new” approach hasn’t helped anything— but then he realizes that he’s seeing two words repeated over and over again on the page in front of him… _vivid dreams._ He clicks on one of the results and reads that, according to some psychology website, vivid dreams are dreams which are unusual intense and thus usually more memorable then “regular” dreams. The description sounds… _close_ to what Mark has been experiencing for about a month… however, after a little more poking around Mark finds that most people use the term to talk about nightmares, nightmare adjacent dreams or dreams where you’re aware that you’re dreaming. No one seems to be using “vivid dreams” to talk about dreams which feel so real and lifelike that Mark keeps waking up half-convinced that he’s actually asleep and the world he sees in his dreams is the real world.

Still, it’s more then he’s gotten any other time he’s googled— or the few times he got so desperate that he ‘binged’— so mark takes the same approach of typing out something that’s more of a rambling stream of conscious then a proper Google search…

**_same dream every night_ **

This time Google chooses to highlight a result. It’s from _HowStuffWorks_ and says that reoccurring dreams are a sign that something in your life has not been acknowledged and is causing stress, which causes you to repeat your dream over and over until you either correct or acknowledge the problem. While Mark is tempted to write his dream as a weird stress reaction… there’s no _problem_ in his dreams. Or a least, there’s no _recurring_ problem or anything that resembles a big looming issue.

So that’s not helpful— except that this makes Mark actually realize that he’s not, technically, having the same dream every night. He is dreaming of the same _place_ and in those dreams he’s always the same _person_ … but he’s not dreaming of the same events. It’s more like he’s tuning into the latest episode of some tv show, whereas actually having the same dream every night would be like watching the same episode of that show over and over again. Though, given that his dreams are in first person, perhaps the better comparison would be _playing_ a character in the latest episode of some tv show, with all the behind the scenes and retakes cut out.

So despite not getting what he wants or really needs, and the fact that what he has discovered is in no way thanks to Google… at least he’s finally getting something.

So Mark tries once again.

**_every night i dream another day in someone’s life where the real me is their dream_ **

This time all that Google gives him is a long list of links to different dream interpretation websites, alongside a few posts from people who got so high they either dreamed or hallucinated an entire lifetime in what was at most a single night. While Mark checks out a few of the results, they’re all either too mystical to be anything but bullshit designed to sell you something or connected to substances which Mark has either never touched or hasn’t touched in _years_.

So Mark deletes his latest search terms… and for a moment he just stares at the now blank box, debating if he should try once more or just give up and go to bed already. Then, slowly, with his fingers hesitating before every single keystroke, Mark types out a confession that he’d been trying not to think about, let alone write down.

**_i'm starting to think that my dreams are real and this world is fake_ **

If this was a video he was putting together the words would flash on screen in giant red text in some appropriately creepy or disturbing font. But… this isn’t a video, so the words are just simple black text on a white background. But, still, feel strangely painful to look at and Mark finds himself hitting enter just to have something else to look at.

The initial results make him feel slightly better because of how similar to past searches they look. There’s a few results from Quora, a result from blog which appears to be focused on teaching you how to lucid dream and then Mark’s eye land upon the sixth result: _Dream-reality confusion in borderline personality disor—_

Mark’s hands all but slam down on his keyboard, resulting in a rather distressing sound of plastic bending and something cracking as he somehow manages to close not just the page displaying the Google search results, but the entire internet browser and bring up notepad— of all things— which is now filling up with random key smashes, since his hands are still pressing on the keyboard. An angry beep that a part of his brain identifies as sticky keys finally causes Mark to pull his hands off the keyboard and push back from the computer with such force that his desk chair spins slightly.

Seemingly on their own Mark’s hands rise to run through his head as he tries to calm his suddenly racing heart and control his breathing… all the while struggling not to ask a question which has been on the tip of his tongue for the past three days.

**_am I going crazy?_ **

Because while Mark can’t quite remember what exactly _borderline personality disorder_ is, the term “dream-reality confusion” not only does a pretty good job of describing what he’s going through, but definitely sounds like the kind of thing a doctor would mutter while gesturing for his orderlies to throw you into a padded cell.

Mark mentally scrambles to find a reason not to freak out… but all he can settle on is that his dreams aren’t violent. He’s not dreaming of killing people or hurting people or anything like that. No… his dreams are perhaps the most mundane thing he’s ever experienced and despite feeling so _real_ , they’re also so mind-numbingly boring that it’s almost unbelievable.

His dreams always start out the same way— his dream self wakes up in a crappy bed which is in a little crappy two room one bathroom apartment which. Once or twice he’s waken up on the obviously super cheap couch which occupies the “living room” section of the same room which holds the apartment’s tiny kitchen, but most times he wakes in the bed. After waking he goes about all the steps of a normal daily routine— brushing teeth, hair, getting dressed, having breakfast, etc. There’s a carryover of sorts from dream to dream— stuff like, if one day in the dream he finishes up the last of the milk and doesn’t buy more then he doesn’t have any to drink the next day.

He’s not Markiplier in his dreams… and he’s not Mark Fischbach. Instead he’s… someone else. He has a name. He’s said his name, see it written on documents, even signed it on various occasions. However, for the life of him, he can’t seem to hold on to that name once he wakes up. What he does manage to hold on to is his dream-self’s profession.

Because dream him isn’t a famous YouTuber… or a YouTuber at all. Instead, dream-him is a writer. So that how Mark thinks of him, when he thinks of him, and that’s what Mark calls him— the writer.

Now, in a _sensible_ dream, a normal dream, in anything other than whatever the hell Mark’s ongoing dream is, his dream-self would be successful writer. Heck, in a normal dream he’d not just a successful writer, he’d be a _wildly_ successful writer, with hordes of fans, bookstores featuring his works on tables, interviews every other day and money to burn… but that’s not the case.

The writer… doesn’t make a living writing. Instead he only just makes ends meet by working construction and occasionally picking up the odd writing gig. He hasn’t had anything of note published since the year after he graduated from college… but he still considers himself a writer, still sits down to write even when he’s exhausted from working all day and still sends his work out in the hopes of one day being published and having his stories read and appreciated.

Here is where the mind-numbingly boring part comes in, because Mark’s dreams don’t even have the decency to be cinematic about the events of the writers’ day. He doesn’t get to “watch” montages of his dream self-working construction intercut with b-roll of a writer trying and often failing to write something halfway decent. No, in his dreams Mark lives through every single second as it happens. There are no skips, cuts or time jumps and every single second is in first person.

It— it _should_ feel maddening, how slow time passes in his dreams. How he’s stuck living a fake life at real speed. It should be driving Mark crazy, how normal the writer’s life is… but it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel odd and it doesn’t feel maddening and while Mark is starting to become half-way convinced he’s going crazy and that his dreams to blame… its not the dreams. It’s reality.

Because… in Mark’s dreams, time feels real. It feels right. In his reality? Not so much. In fact… if he’s being honest? Compared to his dreams, real life feels fake. The amount of time it takes for the writer he is in his dreams to edit a short story or go get some needed supply from Home Depot seems realistic in a way that the amount of time it takes for the gamer he actually is to play some indie horror game or edit that footage into a video for YouTube doesn’t.

Once Mark had started thinking along these lines he found himself hyper aware of every single time that the clock seemed to move too fast or too slow. He finds himself keeping track of all those times when hours pass by in what feels like it should have been a few minutes or when a minute seems to last for hours and hours.

And… it gets worse. Because the writer always wakes up feeling as if he’s slept, while whenever the gamer wakes up he feels like he’s been awake all night long. The writer seems unaffected, while the gamer’s exhaustion is so all consuming that he’s honestly surprised he can breathe, let alone stand and walk and all. But, somehow, that exhaustion doesn’t seem to impact his life in any way that someone else can notice. There’s no outcry from his fans asking why he looks so horrible in his videos and his friends don’t ask what’s wrong.

But, back to the content his dreams… he lives through the writer’s life in real time and while each day in the writer’s life is similar, they’re not entirely the same. For example, one day he may have to work late at the construction job which pays the bills, another day his job may be canceled for one reason or another or he may have the day off and spend the time in a coffee shop furiously typing away at his latest project. No matter what happens during the writer’s day, eventually it comes to an end. The dreams always end the same way… with the writer falling asleep and the gamer waking up.

Part of Mark thinks he’s going crazy, but another part… well it agrees that he’s going crazy, but has different reasons for thinking so. Because the first part believes that he’s a YouTuber and a gamer whose dreams are driving him crazy, while the second believes that the dreams driving him crazy belong to a writer who only works construction jobs to make ends meet. Most of the time Mark manages to stamp down this second part, to let the first part have the mic… but not always.

After all, looking at it objectively, which is more likely to be the case— that he’s _really_ a wanna-be writer working jobs he dislikes to keep the lights on and food on the table… or that he’s a college dropout who has _somehow_ managed to make a living yelling at video games on the internet? Hell, the Gamer seems more like a character the Writer would make up then a real, flesh and blood person…

On several occasions Mark has been tempted to google something along the lines of “ ** _how to tell if you’re awake or dreaming_** ” but… well if he’s honest part of him doesn’t want to know, another part is afraid of what the answer would be and… and he should have gone to bed over an hour ago.

It’s tempting to say that his bed is calling him but really it’s more like the Writer is the one calling out, or perhaps Mark is the one calling out to him. And even if Mark wasn’t of two minds about resisting that call… well there’s a reason that the Guinness World Records no longer keeps records for voluntary sleep deprivation.

~⁂~

Prep for _A Heist with Markiplier_ is going… good? Okay? Not bad? Honestly Mark doesn’t know. He’s still getting used to making videos when the crew of said videos isn’t just himself and some friends who might have only gone along with his mad whims due to Stockholm syndrome or folie a deux or something along those lines. But at the very least nothing is on fire and things appear to be falling into place. However, there’s still a fair amount of work to do before filming can start and while most of it is outside of Mark’s direct control, there are a few things he needs to do. For example, he’s not entirely happy with Darkiplier and Wilford’s cameos into _Heist_ and there’s a few other sections which he still thinks need a little reworking or more extensive planning.

The problem is that whenever he sits down to work on those bits his mind keeps circling back to his dreams of being the Writer. At first those thoughts are focused on how he could include little cameos—throwing in titles of the books the Writer is working on in the background, having one of the zombie endings be the Writer’s life. Then those thoughts shift towards either completely rewriting a video pathway or writing a new pathway that more directly includes the Writer.

About two weeks after Mark’s adventure in Googling he sits down to write out a pathway with the Writer in it— more out of a desire to just get the ideas out of his head and perhaps have something he can use in a future video than anything else. So Mark sits down to write… and suddenly it’s two hours later and instead of working on a video script he’s working on the next chapter of the Writer’s current story, the story which the Writer had been unable to work on for several days due to a combination of writer’s block and simply not having enough time.

When Mark realizes this he all but throws himself back from his keyboard, before hesitantly reaching out for his mouse and scrolling back up to the top of the document… only to find not a hint of the script which he’d started writing, which he could _remember_ starting to write. The document starts off as the Writer’s story and there’s no place in the document where it looks like it had been anything other than a story. Mark hands shift, one finger pressing down ctrl and the other hovering over the z key, debating if he wants to undo his typing, if he wants to wind back the clock and see where and when he stopped doing what he’d set out to do. Eventually he pulls his hands back, nervously drumming his fingers on his desk as he tries to decide what to do next.

Part of him wants to delete it. It’s not a video script that he might one day use and even with huge rewrites the story isn’t really the sort of thing that Markiplier would make. However… another part of him, a much larger part, is almost physically ill at the thought of deleting all his hard work, which could be so helpful to the Writer. So he moves to save the document, intending to bury it in the depths of his computer and forget about it… but instead he finds himself reaching into the drawers of his desk, pulling out a USB flash drive and plugging it into the computer.

It’s almost like Mark is running on autopilot— he waits until the computer recognizes the USB flash drive and checks the files on it. There are a few files, but it’s all old footage that he’s already saved elsewhere, so he chucks the lot into the recycle bin and saves the story he’d ended up writing to the flash drive. Once this is accomplished, he pulls the flash drive out… and places it on his bedside table. There it stays for the rest of the day as Mark goes about his business, half forgetting about it, half _trying_ to forget about it… so when he eventually goes to sleep, the flash drive is still there.

He’s not really all that surprised when the Writer wakes up and the same flash drive is sitting on _his_ bedside table... though he does have the mother of all headaches. On the one hand he’s only aware of being the Writer, but on the other hand… he can almost hear the Gamer’s thoughts, though he is somehow both aware and not aware of this.

The Gamer feels like he could start crying in relief, since this seems like he’s finally getting concrete proof that he’s the real one and the Writer is the dream. Meanwhile the Writer is slightly confused at seeing the flash drive, but quickly writes it off as something he’d done while extremely tired, with the stress of making sure he saved the breakthrough explaining both why he’d saved it on a USB flash drive and why he’d dreamed about the Gamer writing it.

The fact that the writing on the flash drive isn’t on the Writer’s computer only convinces him of this and sends him off to work with a slight smile, since he’d gotten around his writer’s block and now has a veritable ton of ideas for what should happen next. So, the Writer’s day passes like nothing is wrong, like nothing is out of the ordinary or unusual. Soon enough it’s time for the Writer to go to sleep and the Gamer wakes up once again.

At first Mark is happy— he has proof that his dreams aren’t real, so maybe, just _maybe_ , he’ll be able to use that proof to pull himself out of his thoughts of his dreams being real and his reality being fake. Maybe he’ll even stop having Writer dreams. Maybe at some point in the not too distant future he’ll be able to look back on the dreams with laughter, not dread and terror.

But then he turns to the side and sees that the USB flash drive is gone.

For a moment he stares at the spot where he’d placed the flash drive… then he’s moving, all but throwing himself out of bed and tumbling to the floor as he looks around and reaches out with his hands, searching under the bed and the bedside table, hoping and all but praying that the flash drive had just fallen to the floor, that he’ll find it any second now… but all that Mark finds are a few dust bunnies and one of Chica’s old dog toys. He turns to his bed, pulling back the sheets and rifling through them, checking under pillows and inside of pillow cases. He shakes out each sheet, dropping them into a pile after doing so and then going back through the pile twice… but the flash drive is nowhere to be found.

Mark sinks to his knees, his sheets and pillows scattered around him, the mattress behind him slightly off it’s frame… and with trembling hands he reaches for his cell phone. He’s been trying out this new sleep-tracking app— it measures how much you move while sleeping to tell you if you’re getting enough deep sleep. Maybe it’ll show that he got up in the middle of the night, that he was sleepwalking or something and then he can proceed to tear apart the rest of his house to find the flash drive. But according to the app he slept all night with only minimal movement, nothing that could be him getting rolling over, let alone getting out of bed.

Mark has only just enough presence of mind to reach out, grab one of his pillows and press it to his face before he just starts screaming. He screams and _screams_ and **_screams_** … until his throat is raw and he’s gasping for air and the screams have trailed off into pitiful whimpers as the pillow falls to the floor, one hand following it as the other presses over his mouth to keep himself speaking… because while part of him wants to say **_what’s wrong with me?_** another part of him wants to say _thank god this isn’t reality!_

It doesn’t make sense… because _this_ / **his** life is good. Yeah, it’s nowhere near what he would have expected it to be just a few years ago, but _this_ / **his** life is good! He’s got a setup which would make most video game enthusiasts weep, he’s got YouTube itself helping out with his latest insane project and he has millions of fans who will watch and adore any stupid thing he puts out, be it a video like _Boat Dog_ or some stupid post on Tumblr encouraging people to fight him.

So why does part of him want _this_ / **his** life to be a dream? What does part of him long for night to come so that he can be the Writer? Why should he want to be someone struggling to make ends meet? Why does he desire a life which is objectively worse in every way, shape and form?

Mark has no idea… so he does the only thing he really can do. He tides up his bedroom, gets dressed and… lets himself be the Gamer. He lets himself pretend that there’s nothing more than his current life, his current self. Lets himself pretend that he doesn’t prefer another the Writer’s life because he’s also pretending that he can’t remember his life.

It’s like he’d been swimming in a river, trying to go against the current and now he’s going with the current, letting it take him where it will. It feels like he’s checking out, like he’s sleepwalking through the Gamer’s life… it should be super obvious to those around him. He should be getting non-stop questions from those people he knows in real life and his fans who watch his videos asking if something is wrong with him… but no one seems to notice.

So, he just keeps going, drifting through his days— if they really are his days— and throwing all of his available energy into his nights. There’s no drifting as the Writer, he’s fully in the moment even during the dull boring bits… and he’s happy, in a way he never is as the Gamer.

The Gamer finally manages to finish reworking the sections of _Heist_ which he hadn’t been satisfied with into something that, while not perfect, should work. In the process he ends of writing what feels like a good half of the Writer’s latest story, all of which gets carried across the day/night divide via flash drives— which the Gamer can never find the following day. He should at least have found _one_ or run out of flash drives to send over, but he doesn’t. There’s never a flash drive on his bedside table when he wakes up and he never fails to find one when he needs it. By the time he’s off in Austin filming _A Heist with Markiplier_ he doesn’t need flash drives anymore, because the Writer has finished his story and is working on editing it. Soon _Heist_ is off being edited, the Gamer is back in Los Angeles, the Writer has a final version of his story and as the Gamer prepares for the actual release of _Heist_ the Writer starts taking his story around to different publishers…

…and that’s when everything finally falls apart and comes crashing to the ground in the most spectacular fashion.

~⁂~

It’s late in the evening and the Writer had only just arrived home after a long day at work. The construction company that he works for has just finished a big project— a new headquarters for the city’s main TV company, which had recently acquired a few local radio stations. It’ll be the last construction job the Writer works for a while, since the rainy season has officially begun, limiting the amount of construction projects and giving the Writer a sort of semi-holiday.

In honor of this and in celebration of the fact that the Writer’s bank account is fuller then usual— thanks to some puff pieces he’d written for a local business and actually selling a very short story to the same radio station whose new headquarters he’d been building— the Writer stopped on the way home to get dinner.

When the Writer arrives at his apartment the first thing he does, after locking the door behind him, is kick off his boots and sprawl out on the couch to enjoy his Chinese food haul and whatever channels he can pick up with the antenna on the crappy old TV he’d gotten off of Craigslist’s free pages. He manages to pick up some channel playing a marathon of Law & Order SVU, coming in halfway through an episode. By the time that episode ends and another begins he’s all but inhaled his chicken chow mein and is making a start on his moo shu pork.

That’s when the noise starts.

It starts off soft and low, almost echoing on the edges of the Writer’s consciousness. When he becomes aware of the noise, he writes it off as a neighbor’s TV left on after the owner had passed out in a drunken stupor— because at first “glace” the noise seems like nothing more than static.

But then the noise begins to grow, rising and falling in waves that get louder and louder. Within seconds the noise has drown out all the other sounds around the Writer— from the sound of water running through the apartment’s ancient pipes to the sound of cars moving by on the street outside. At this point the Writer starts to wonder what the hell the noise is, because in addition to the static there’s also a sort of ringing, like the sound produced when you run a wet finger over the rim of a wine glass.

The noise is still rising and falling, but the rises seem to have topped out, to have gone as loud as they can. It’s loud enough that the Writer can no longer hear his television, loud enough that he throws up his hands to cup over his ears because the noise is _earsplittingly_ loud… and the Writer realizes something. When he’d covered his ears he’d gasped in pain… and the rising and falling of the noise had been thrown off.

The rising and falling of the static and the ringing is linked to his breathing.

As he breathes in the noise grows in volume and intensity. As he breathes out it falls, almost going away entirely just as he runs out of air to exhale. To confirm this the Writer holds his breath… only to have the air go rushing out of his lungs as suddenly all the lights in his apartment go off, leaving him alone with the glow of the TV, which is now covered in pure static. The Writer’s shocked exhale causes the noise to vanish entirely… before suddenly coming _screaming_ back.

The Writer’s doesn’t know if he screams in pain or just gasps— he can’t hear himself _think_ over the noise, let alone hear any actual noises he’s making. He clamps his hands down even tighter over his now aching ears and his body curls forward as if trying to shield himself from a physical blow.

After a second or two the noise starts following his breathing once again, but this time it’s… muted. Like he’s hearing it form a long way off or form the other side of a wall. Even at the end of his inhale it’s nowhere near the level it had been and at the end of his exhale it vanishes entirely. Slowly the Writer uncurls and hesitantly drops his hands… and realizes that it’s not just the lights in his apartment which have gone out.

There’s no light coming in through his apartment’s windows. While the sun had set a while ago, the position of the street lights outside has always made it so that the Writer has no need for lights at night and had made him spend money he didn’t have on blackout curtains for his bedroom. But it’s more then that, because as the Writer looks out his windows he can’t even see the lights of nearby buildings, or cars passing by or even the stars and moon. It’s like his windows are looking out on complete and utter blackness… like there’s _nothing_ out there. Like the only light in the entire world is the light of the static on the Writer’s TV.

As the Writer’s gaze goes back to his television, he notices that the bottom of the screen seems… odd. It’s almost like someone has filled a glass up to the brink and is starting to slowly tilt it to one side. As the Writer watches the bottom of the screen bulges and starts to spill down the front of the television, before falling to the floor where it starts forming a puddle. It’s like the static has become a white liquid, with little bots of black and grey jumping around in it like they’re some kind of living creatures. As the static pours out of the television the space it had occupied on the screen goes dark, so that now the only light that the Writer can see is coming from the growing puddle of static.

When the last bit of static leaves the television screen the noise stops rising and falling with the Writer’s breathing and turns into a low continuous droning sound which is obviously coming from the static-y puddle. Before the Writer’s eyes the puddle starts _twitching_ and then slowly rising up to form two columns which go about two feet up into the air before joining together, and just as the Writer realizes they look like _legs_ — he wakes up.

The Writer is lying sprawled out on his couch, cradling his mostly empty box of moo shu pork like it’s a baby, which has thankfully kept it from spilling all over the place. The Law and Order SVU marathon has ended and the local late-night news show is on. The Writer catches a second of a weather report before it flips back to the anchor.

“Thanks Jim! Now to our next story— the popular YouTube series _BuzzFeed Unsolved_ has been causing quite a stir among local police and amateur detectives. The episode focused on the events of October 10th 1920, when local movie star Ma—”

The television goes silent as the Writer hits the off button on the remote, before he sets about gathering up the remains of his Chinese food feast and preparing to go to bed. He stashes the merger leftovers in his fridge and pulls out his laptop, setting it up on his kitchen table so that he can check his email, something he hadn’t been able to do today because his phone decided to die halfway through his lunch break. He doesn’t bother pulling out a chair to sit down, because checking his email should only take a second and if he doesn’t sit down he won’t be tempted to start writing and thus stay up too late.

There are four emails in his inbox. Two are spam which has slipped by the filters, one is a writer’s newsletter he subscribes to and the last… the last is from one of the publishers that he’d sent his latest story off to. After taking a deep breath and pausing to shake his hands in an attempt to get over the nervousness the sight of that email brings, the Writer opens it up… and a single phrase almost jumps out at him— **_I regret to inform you that we’re declining to publish your work._**

At first the Writer is disappointed, but not really surprised. He’s faced rejection before… but then he looks at the rest of the email. The very first paragraph, where the single sentence that had jumped out at him lies, is in a slightly different font then the rest, like it’s been copied and pasted from somewhere else. The rest of the email… well in addition to being in a slightly different font, it’s riddled with spelling errors and one of the most insulting things that the Writer has ever read. It claims that his work is juvenile and badly in need of editing. It suggests that the Writer attend a writing course— after he finishes middle school. It suggests he read two books for examples of what the publisher is looking for… two books by an author who shares a name with the man writing the letter, who has the same last name as the owner of the publisher.

The Writer doesn’t even bother to try suppressing a scream of rage, as his hands clench into fists, his nails biting into the flesh of his palms. His work, which he’s slaved over, which he obsesses over, has been turned down by some idiotic rich boy who probably hired someone to write a book for him and only has a job because of his father’s money. Some idiot who probably hadn’t even bothered to _read_ his manuscript not only rejected him but told him to attend a writing course and implied that his story was bad enough to bankrupt the publisher.

“It’s not fair.” The Writer hisses as he forces himself to unclench his hands. There are little half circle cuts on his palms form his fingernails, where blood has started to sluggishly pool.

“You’re right.” A voice whispers from somewhere behind him. It sounds… familiar, yet at the same time completely foreign. “It isn’t fair.”

Slowly, hesitant, the Writer turns around… and finds himself starting a man that he does not recognize, a man that he’s never seen before. But the Writer feels like he _should_ recognize the man, like he’s known the man forever, like the man’s name is on the tip of his tongue.

“You… are a hard man to find.” The man comments as the Writer just stares at him.

The stranger is dressed as if he’s ready for a night out on the town— shiny black dress shoes, perfectly ironed black dress pants, a white collared shirt without a wrinkle to be seen with a perfectly tied black bowtie beneath a red velvet jacket. The man’s black hair is swept back from his face in such a way that you’re supposed to think he just woke up like that… but it’s so obviously painstakingly styled that it just makes the man look like an asshole. This impression is only enhanced by the dusting of stubble on the man’s face— again it’s supposed to look like he just “woke up this way” but it’s so obviously been me meticulously cut to just the right length that… well it all but screams not just “asshole” but “narcissistic asshole.”

“What?” The Writer asks, speaking more to fill the sudden silence then in any expectation of getting an answer.

“You are a hard man to find.” The man repeats himself, pausing ever so slightly between each word. “A gamer one moment, a writer the next and never asleep. It’s made it awfully hard for me to drop by for a little chat.”

The man leans forward slightly as he speaks and the Writer realizes that the man’s face is… _wrong_. It’s too perfect, too symmetrical, without any of the little imperfections that everyone has. There’s not one eyelash out of place, no hair that a different shade then the others, no speck of spit, smear of dirt or stray bit of fluff. It’s like the man in front of the Writer is someone’s idea of a man instead of an actual flesh and blood human.

Again the Writer has that feeling that he _knows_ this man, that he’s know the man for years, that the man’s name is on the tip of his tongue. He’s dimly aware that he should be freaking out over there being a stranger in his apartment, but all he feels is confusion and a desire to know what the hell is happening.

“Wha— who are you?” The Writer asks. “Do I know you?”

“Not as well as you think.” The man replies with a smile which somehow makes his lips seem darker as they part to reveal entirely too many teeth which are an unearthly shade of white. There’s something odd about the way the lips move, something unnatural, like his smile is being pulled open and up by the corners of his mouth… and suddenly something clicks in the Writer’s head as he realizes that yes, he _does_ know the man standing in front of him.

“You’re… you’re from the Gamer’s videos. You’re Mark Iplier—”

“ _Ee-plea-air_ actually.”

“But… you’re just a character, a washed up Actor who thinks he’s the hero.”

“Thinks? _THINKS?!_ ” The Actor screams and the Writer is sent flying backwards, slamming painfully against the wall of his kitchen. “ ** _I AM THE HERO!_** ”

The ringing static from what the Writer had assumed was a dream is suddenly back and so loud that he can feel it in his bones as the Actor rages, screaming inhumanly and almost entirely incoherently. The Writer claps his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt not to loose his hearing, but he can still hear some of the Actor’s rants— something about a thieving Colonel, a woman running off, a foolish Detective and dead man walking. The Writer closes his eyes as he screams in pain… and everything suddenly goes quiet.

The Writer hesitates for a second before he opens his eyes… the Actor is standing there like nothing had happened, slowly smoothing down the front of his jacket. Slowly the Writer takes his hands off his ears and feels something wet on his cheek, just below his right eye. He reaches up to touch the spot and his fingers come away with blood as he notices that there are small scratches on his arms and little bits of debris embedded in the wall he had been thrown into. The cuts are all superficial, most of them not even bleeding, though the one on his face is dripping, the blood running down his face feeling strangely like a tear.

“I … I find myself disappointed.” The Actor’s voice is at a normal volume but is so sickeningly sweet that it almost makes the Writer sick. “I would think that a Writer of your caliber would be able to recognize a hero when he saw one.”

 _I’m asleep_. The Writer thinks as he stares at the Actor. _I have to be asleep. This has to be a dream_.

“Now what on earth makes you think this is a dream?” The Author asks, taking a step towards the Writer, who unconsciously presses himself backwards against the wall of the kitchen.

“Well, apart from the fact you just read my thoughts?” The Writer asks. “How about the fact that you’re a fictional character from the videos the Gamer makes in my dreams?”

“In your dreams… oh, I see what’s going on.” The Actor sighs, reaching up to brush a non-existent strand of hair out of his eyes. “It’s bedtime for Markimoo, so the Writer gets to be in control and decide what is and what is not reality.”

“What are you talk—” The Writer cuts himself off with a scream as the pain as the pain from the cuts and being thrown into the wall seems to shift and pool behind his eyes, turning into a headache which feels like someone has jammed an ice pick into his skull and is trying to split it in two. His hands fly to his head, grabbing on to his hair, nails digging into his scalp as he screams and screams and— there’s an unnaturally loud snap of fingers and suddenly no sound is coming out of the Writer’s mouth.

“That’s better.” The Actor sighs. “Getting hard to hear myself speak.”

The Writer still screaming, he can feel it in his throat, feel it in his lungs but no sound is coming out. The pain only gets worse as, through half-closed eyes, the Writer sees the Actor slowly walking towards him. He all he can do is back up and he’s so close to the wall already that there’s nowhere to go. He lashes out with both hand which the Actor easily avoids before placing one hand on the Writer’s head, the lower edges of the Actor’s palm brushing against the tips of the Writer’s eyebrows, his fingers biting into the Writer’s scalp with what would be painful force if not for still raging headache.

The Actor’s palm feels strangely warm for a second and the Writer can hear him mumbling something which doesn’t sound like English under his breath… and the Writer’s headache is suddenly gone as, like it was never even there. The Actor pulls his hand away and the Writer sags forward, throwing one hand out at the last moment to stop himself from falling flat on his face.

But despite the fact he’d only thrown out one hand, he can see two hands in front of him. Both are right hands and both are half-see through, save for where the two right hands overlap. In that overlap the skin isn’t see through, though the texture of the skin seems off due to the overlap and difference in positions.

Slowly the Writer sits up and raises his hands in front of him… to find that it’s not just his right hand. Both his hands— and his arms as well— seem to be split in two, with any area that the two copies of his limbs don’t overlap being see-through. When he moves his arms, his hands, his fingers, the two sets move in slightly different ways and no matter how he moves they don’t completely overlap… but they’d don’t completely separate either.

The Actor lets out a little huff of laughter and the Writer looks up at him. There’s a smirk on the Actor’s face as he shakes out the hand he’d placed on the Writer’s head.

 ** _“What… what did you do?”_** The Writer asks, his voice sounding like two people speaking at once, ever so slightly out of sync.

“Part of you was sleeping.” The Actor replies, reaching into an inner pocket of his red velvet jacket. “I woke him up.”

From his jacket pocket the Actor pulls out a compact mirror and he tosses it to the Writer, who catches it easily with right hands. He holds it up… and after a moment of hesitation, opens it and holds the mirror within up so he can see his face.

His head is split just like his limbs… and despite the fact that the only difference between the two heads is the hairstyle, he knows which is which. The Writer is on the right… the Gamer is on the left. Both move in unison like their hands and arms, both are half-see through where they don’t overlap, but unlike his other limbs the overlap doesn’t shift as much. The Writer’s left eye appears permanently merged with the Gamer’s right eye.

They don’t know what is happening… but they know that they’re not dreaming and that for the first time in a long time they’re not just the Writer and the Gamer. No, they’re together, they’re—

“Mark.”

The compact mirror falls from their hands as the Actor speaks their name and their gaze snaps to him.

“How nice to finally talk face to… well faces.” The Actor’s smile flashes like a knife in a dark alley.

 ** _“What have you done?”_** They ask, their voices speaking together but ever so slightly out of sync.

“As I said— part of you was sleeping. I woke him up.”

**_“Why?”_ **

“Because I have a proposition for you… one which I believe will help all of us out.” The Actor explains. “You’ve been having rather a rough time of it lately… flipping back and forth between two lives, two yous, two realities. Sure, it’s wearing on one of you more then the other, but if things keep going this way both of you will suffer.”

 ** _“And you’re going to help us out of the good of your heart?”_** They ask. Both of them trembling, though the Gamer’s shakes are a great deal worse then the Writer’s.

“I’ll admit my solution to this problem would benefit me as well. In short, you help me get what I want and I help you with what you want.”

**_“And what is it you think we want?”_ **

“To stop being the Gamer.” The Actor replies, causing the Gamer to freeze in place as the Writer wraps his arms around him as tight as he can. “I can make sure that the next time the Writer sleeps, the Gamer doesn’t wake.”

 _“I won’t let you kill him!“_ The Writer snarls as the Gamer stays silent.

“I wouldn’t be killing him, I’d be merging the two of you… and making sure more of the Writer comes out on top. But that’s not all… I can make this life _perfect_.”

 **“What do you mean?”** This time the Gamer is the only one to speak.

“I’ve been reading those stories the two you write. You’re talented… and not appreciated. A writer needs his stories to be read, needs his stories to happen— be that in the reader’s mind or on stage or on screen.” The Actor’s voice is sweet, like someone talking to a beloved pet. “Write for me… and I’ll make sure that you’re an Author. Someone everyone known, someone whose work is appreciated and who is rewarded for that work. I’ll make sure that your stories… _happen_.”

**_“So all we have to do is… write?”_ **

“Yes… in fact I only really need you to write one thing.” As the Actor speaks he holds up a single finger.

**_“Which is?”_ **

“I’m tempted to call it an ending… but it’s more of a mid-season cast change.” The Actor replies. “After all, you want this life to be real… and you don’t want to be constantly dreaming about a life that isn’t your’s, now do you.”

 ** _“No.”_** They whisper, their voices perfectly in sync.

“So what do you say… do we have a deal?” The Actor asks as he extends his hand. For a moment the Writer and the Gamer don’t move. Then, slowly, hesitantly, they reach out with their right hands, which merge into one just before they take hold of the Actor’s hand and shake, once and then twice.

The Actor drops their hands like he’s been burned, and their fingers split into two sets once more as the Actor reaches inside of an inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out a piece of paper and a pen, which he offers to them. The Gamer takes the paper, the Writer the pen and they look at them curiously.

“Your end of the bargain first.” The Actor informs them, gesturing to the paper and pen. They hesitate and the Actor sighs. “Oh, all right, I guess I can be generous… after all I am the hero.”

With that the Author snaps his fingers and the Writer’s computer dings to alert him to a new email. As one he and the Gamer turn towards the computer which, on it’s own, opens up to reveal that the message is an acceptance letter from one of the most well regarded publishers in the city. The letter is overflowing with praise and all but begging for the Writer to come down to their offices tomorrow— at whatever time would work best for him— so that they can start ironing out the publishing of what they refer to as “undoubtably the first of many bestsellers.”

The Gamer places the paper on the table, the Writer puts the pen to it. They slowly breathe out and then in as the Actor leans in, a smirk on his face as looks down at the paper as they begin to write.

~⁂~

With a groan the Writer wakes, staring at his stained popcorn ceiling as he slowly blinks. He’s lying on his kitchen floor spread eagle in the previous days clothes… and it feels like something crawled into his mouth and died. The source of that is easy to determine as he shifts slightly and his right arm hits against an empty bottle of beer, while his right hand lands in a small puddle of the same liquid.

With another groan the Writer hauls himself into a sitting position and takes stock of himself. There’s an empty bottle of beer on his kitchen table, the bottle he’d just hit and another empty bottle sitting on the floor a small distance away from him. He’s got a crumpled-up piece of paper clutched tightly in his left hand. He looks down at the paper with a frown, blinking a few times to try and clear his vision as he struggles to remember what the hell happened the previous night… after a second, it comes back in bits and pieces.

Falling sleep on the couch. The weird dream. Waking and checking his email, only to find the most insulting rejection he’d ever received… and he must have started drinking out of anger, because being blackout drunk would certainly explain the other events he remembers after that rejection, events which have to have been some sort of dream or drunken hallucination.

Hauling himself to his feet the Writer staggers over to his computer and checks his email… the rejection email is there— but so is the acceptance email, along with a reply from him arranging a meeting for later today and the publisher accepting his proposed meeting time. So… at some point the drinking must have changed from anger to celebration. Thankfully he doesn’t feel too hungover— a nap and some coffee and he’ll be ready to negotiate his first book deal.

With the events of the previous night nailed down and a plan for today starting to form, the Writer turns his attention to the crumpled-up paper that he’d woken up holding. He’s written some real crap before while drunk… but he’s also written some fairly decent stuff, or at least scribblings which could be whipped into becoming fairly decent stuff. In fact his most recent work, the one which is going to be his first story published, started off as a few lines on the back of a cocktail napkin.

So the Writer sits down at his kitchen table, places the paper to the side of his computer, smooths it out and sets down to decipher his writing, which looks more chaotic than usual, almost like two people had been holding on to the pen.

It looks like he’d written an end to his strange recurring dreams— the ones about the dissatisfied Gamer, who had everything he could want but was still unsatisfied. It had been obvious from the first dream about the Gamer which the Writer had that the dreams were a reflection of his own dissatisfaction with his construction job and lack of recognition for his work. How appropriate that he’d written an ending for the Gamer’s story right after his own issues were finally resolved…

> _the Gamer wakes suddenly in his bedroom. It is ~~midnight~~ a few minutes before midnight. Without speaking the Gamer stands and, as if guided by some unseen ~~dark~~ ~~demonic~~ malevolent presence heads downstairs. from the cupboard beneath his sink he grabs two candles and a lighter, last used to fix a nocook diner during a summer blackout. He also grabs a knife._
> 
> _With knife in one hand, candles/lighter in the other, the Gamer heads upstairs, to his bedroom and through to the connected bathroom. He does not turn on a single light as he travels through the house. He doesn’t need to._
> 
> _Upon reaching the bathroom he all but tosses the knife into the sink and more gently sets the candles on the counter. He lights them one at a time, placing one to the right and one to the left of his mirror. The lighter is dropped, falling to the floor forgotten as the Gamer stares at his reflection in the caldel lite._
> 
> _Then he reaches down, takes hold of the knife in his right hand. Without hesitation he cuts a deep gash across the center of his left palm. The pain reigsters but he does not react. Simply switches to holding the knife in his left hand and cutting his right palm in the same manor. this acomplished the knife falls from his fingers once more to land in the sink as he looks at his bleeding palms_
> 
> _As the blood starts to pool and then drip down over the sides he tilts his hands so the blood flows over his fingers, then he reaches up, using his ~~left~~ right hand to draw a circle on the mirror. As the circle is completed the shadows at the edge of his vision start to flicker and resolve into a humanoid shape standing behind him._
> 
> _With his eyes staring unfocused ahead, straight into his reflection’s eyes, the Gamer presses his left hand to the center of the circle he’d drawn and his right hand to the center of his chest. For a second all is still then he begins to ~~gag~~ cough and blood starts to poor from his lips as he continues to cough_
> 
> _The humanoid shape moves closer, pressing up against the Gamer, it’s arms wrapping around and starting to spread out, like they are liquid, to cover the Gamer’s skin. The sound of static breaks the silence as the shape starts to flicker, all grey and white and black dots._
> 
> _The Gamer is still looking ahead at the mirror as this happens. He does not flinch, does not move away. Soon all he can see are his eyes and blood in a sea of static._
> 
> _“Let me in.” the static ~~hisses~~ ~~threatens~~ ~~whispers~~ ~~scrams~~ whispers. “Give me this life.”_
> 
> _“_ **I let you in**.” _the Gamer replies as static flows into his mouth. **“**_ **I give you this life.** ”
> 
> _With a roar the static surges forward and the Gamer has a brief moment of regret before he knows no more._

The ending is… not what he would have thought he’d give the Gamer. What’s most interesting is how, despite the fact that it ends with a hint that the Gamer regrets his actions and then the Gamer’s apparent death, the Writer feels strangely… uplifted.

With a sigh the Writer runs a hand through his hair as he contemplates what to do with the paper and the story written on it. His first thought it to throw it out… but that’s one hell of an ending. If he shifted things around, made the Gamer’s dreams something more desirable, the Gamer’s life more depressing, throw in a few more hints at the supernatural along the way… well then this could be his next story.

It’s not like he’s got anything else in the works right now… and, after all, what sort of writer stops writing just because they’re now a published author?

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: I have no idea where this came from. Seriously this fanfic just wanted to be made and who am I to object? Like seriously one day I just stress wrote out a very wordy sort of outline, which I poked at for a while before sitting down to write the actual story. The story changed SO MUCH from that outline to the finished story, like they’re essentially two entirely different stories sharing only a few points.  
> Also I’ve got a plan for more of this, specifically a plan to bring in some more of Mark’s Egos and bring about some even more drastic changes in the Writer. I don’t know if I’ll end up writing that or not, I’ve got a much longer fic I’m rewriting that I should be focusing on.


End file.
